


revenant

by deckards



Category: Doctor Strange (Comics), Marvel 616, New Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 12:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9440639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deckards/pseuds/deckards
Summary: in the aftermath of a disastrous battle with the new avengers, stephen strange returns to kamar-taj to repent for his mistakes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> thanks as always to my fearless and fantastic friend, [karson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AClockworkLove), for all their help and support, and to [em](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/2635521/) for her wonderful advice and betaing. you guys are the best. ❤
> 
> originally written for [strange zine](http://strangezine.tumblr.com/).

 

> and i have failed at my task of sorcerer supreme of this dimension. i—i don’t think i can help you anymore. i need to atone for what i have done. i need to relearn all that i have lost. and put back magics which i had no business using in the first place.
> 
> \---- brian michael bendis

 

 

He should have done this long ago. He should never have had to do this at all. The air at this altitude is thin and cold. It sears the back of his throat and coats the inside of his lungs with frost instead of filling them with oxygen. He tries to breathe through the collar of his cloak. The moisture clings to his mustache and freezes into tiny icicles that hang from his face, white tendrils on black hair, white blotches on raw red skin. Frostbite.

His first instinct is to reach for magic, but that is a power he no longer possesses. What little of it remains to him is limited by his shattered hands, corrupted by demonic energies. It was a mistake to think he could control Zom. Anyone would have known not to meddle with that kind of evil, but Stephen Strange isn’t just anyone. He’s never been just anything—not in his estimation; he has always thought too highly of himself. He suspects that even his attempts at humility are glossed with shades of self-satisfaction, the confidence in believing he is more humble, somehow better than. He is a fool.

He treks forward and tries to breathe through his nose. Technically, scientifically, this is the most efficient way to heat the air before it settles like a stone in his chest cavity. It’s difficult to maintain and he finds himself gulping at the frozen wind while his muscles flare from the strain of trudging up, up, up, stomping out a pathway through three feet of snow. From time to time his foot crashes to the ground below and he has to pause to dig himself free.

Eventually the earth levels off into a wide, featureless plateau. At its edge, nestled into the sheer rock wall of the mountain, are the bleached bones of the Ancient One’s abandoned temple. The crags and crumbling stonework cast long blue shadows over the untouched ground as Stephen approaches, slowly gouging a trench through the barren landscape, a scar cut through the otherwise pristine land.

By the time he reaches the ruins he’s overheating beneath his woolen robes and old blue tunic. Sweat mats his hair and pools at the base of his spine and his breathing is ragged and uneven. The tumbling archway has lost much of the majesty it once held; its last defences against the elements, a few rotting planks of ornamented wood and twisted pieces of shimmering metal, cling to the stone edifice like broken teeth in a gaping maw. Stephen’s footsteps crunch softly as he steps through into a wide hall. Snow drifts are piled up against the walls. Not far inside, the light begins to fade. It used to be a simple matter to conjure a wreath of flames in his palm; instead he pulls a flashlight from the small sack at his waist and turns it on with a sharp click. The noise echoes loudly in the empty place.

It gets darker the deeper he goes, but the wind and snow relent, finally held at bay by the labyrinthine passages. The sweat stuck to his skin cools and freezes and as the walls open up into a large, hollow chamber, his entire body is stiff and frozen. Except his hands. His hands are burning, the damaged nerves shooting bright lines of pain up his arms. It’s an electrical fire under his flesh, his skin a wrapping that feels more like thick swaths of neoprene than something human. It’s been this way since the car accident forty-odd years ago. The screaming agony comes in waves, unpredictable and for indiscriminate lengths of time, but the numbness is permanent. This discomfort at least is familiar, unlike the sharp scrape of his metacarpal bones shifting against each other in their rough, insufficient binding. Sometimes his fingers twitch, and he half expects a jagged edge of bone to slice through a tendon. His hands shake, and he has trouble keeping the flashlight level. The small beam of light it provides jumps across the darkness in fits and starts.

He sinks to the ground in the centre of the room. Around him, worn pillars like a cracked ribcage reach for the high ceiling. He crosses his legs and places the flashlight at his feet and closes his eyes. The first time he came here in search of healing, hundreds of braziers burned brightly, keeping the temple awash in a warm glow. Even at night, embers glowed red and guttering flames flicked around him, hissing and spitting. The shadows that danced through the hallways had an orange hue and the smell of burning incense and charcoal hung in the air. This darkness is different; the splotches of colour that pop across his closed eyelids are blue and grey and there’s something acrid about the smell. It’s not the clean, crackling scent of the storm outside, but something more septic, like a morgue or a chest freezer filled with rotting meat.

Stephen focuses on his breathing, in and out, in and out, smooth and calm and methodical. The temperature has dropped again, and even swaddled in layers of clothing he can feel the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck standing up. His teeth start chattering, the ticks and clicks snapping around the wide chamber, and he clenches his jaw tightly to still them. To his left, something creaks and shuffles, likely the wind blowing through discarded fabric. He begins to shut out external distractions, counts each inhale and exhale, one, two, three, four—the rustling is persistent, hissing like a nest of snakes—five, six, seven—it’s louder and closer, and Stephen opens his eyes.

The room is darker, colder, and there’s a shape looming among the half-collapsed pillars. Stephen has run across vagrants here before. He pulls his hands into the folds of his cloak and addresses the shadows without rising. “What do you want?” he says—a demand, not a question.

The darkness chuckles in reply, a rumbling rasping that seems to come from every direction, and the shape shambles closer and closer. It is black and featureless in the gloom, with a humanoid outline and two round pricks of white light where its eyes should be.

Stephen’s knees crack when he stands, twin pops and crisp, ringing echoes. His fingers twitch with the memory of magic, a lingering instinct to defend himself through the mystic arts.

The figure creeps closer, sliding and stumbling across the room like it hasn’t quite settled into a form, and it’s blurred at the edges, parts of it trailing away into the darkness. It doesn’t seem to have a mouth, only those cold glowing eyes. It says, “Stephen Strange,” and there’s a lilt like laughter in its harsh voice. “You’ve returned again at last. I’ve been waiting so very, very long.”  
“What do you want?” he says again.

“Oh, Stephen. You’re no fun,” it says. The thing is finally close enough that the weak illumination from the flashlight allows him to glimpse its features. For a moment, it could be the gaunt, aged lineaments of the Ancient One, until they slide and melt, sloughing off in liquid flakes and fluttering into the shadows.

He reaches for the only weapon he has: a small dagger inscribed with Celtic runes. The blade gets caught in the folds of his robes, and he fumbles to grip the hilt, his fingers numb and clumsy and stinging. When he looks up, the thing has changed its face to a drooping facsimile of his younger sister, Donna. He should have saved her, but he didn’t; he was too wrapped up in himself to notice she’d slipped beneath the smooth surface of the lake until she was dead, drowned just behind their childhood home. The imposter laughs and Stephen snarls, finally freeing the knife. The edge is sharp and bright, lit up like a sliver of moon in the gloaming.

“I will not ask you again: what do you want?”

The thing, it crumples into a void, collapsing in on itself like a sinkhole. From its depths it sniggers as it rearranges itself. It says, “I want you on tilt.” It cocks its head. From below the flashlight picks out the silhouette of Victor’s rough jaw—another deceased sibling reflected in ragged strokes. Another death Stephen was too busy to prevent. “But it looks like you already are. How delightful.”

Stephen steps forward, until he’s close enough to smell the rot rolling out of the spectre’s gaping smile. He says, “This is a sacred place and you have no business mocking the dead. Be gone from here.” His palms have started sweating and his hand aches from trying to keep a firm grip on the dagger.

“Make me,” it says.

Stephen lunges at it, slashing wildly, sawing through empty air. The thing reforms behind him. To his back it says, “Not exactly surgical precision, Doctor.”

“Oh good, puns. I don’t hear enough of those.” He turns, and its face has changed again, only this time, the one it wears doesn’t belong on a corpse: it belongs on his wife. Stephen’s fingers jerk violently and the dagger clatters to the ground. He hisses, dragging a breath of frozen, musty air in through gritted teeth. He isn’t sure when he last saw Clea, not exactly, but he knows it’s been far too long. His memories of their more recent exchanges are tinged with petty bitterness, the long silences between visits heavy with inarticulate anger and mute longing. “Get out,” he says. His voice is a low growl, predatory and menacing, but his hands won’t stop shaking. He hides them in his cloak.

It floats across to him, the jarring movements transformed into a serene ghastliness. It places a hand on his face and it feels like having icicles pressed against his cheek. Its rancid meat breath tickles the hairs on Stephen’s neck and it whispers, “As you wish, my love.”

And just like that, it’s gone and Stephen is alone amidst the ruins of the empty, cavernous hall, the monster’s words echoing like a drumbeat through his ears. He stands still until the cold crawls in through the soles of his boots, then he sinks to the ground and crosses his legs and closes his eyes and concentrates on his breathing, in and out, in and out, like he was taught to do so long ago. He needs to focus, to atone, to find his way back to the path he’s meant to be on, but he can still feel the creature’s frigid touch on his skin and his hands won’t stop shaking. He tries to ball them into fists and the joints stick. He opens his eyes and feels around for the knife and he places it in front of him in case there are any more horrors lurking.

Deep breath in. He’s used to seeing his mistakes paraded around. It’s one of the reasons he sleeps so little; without any particular help from Nightmare, his subconscious mind revels in replaying the quiet moments that haunt him most of all, his most personal fears and failures. Exhale. He has tried to excise his ghosts with meditation and magic, but to no effect: they’re a symbiotic malignancy that’s become somehow inherent to his existence.

Slowly, his hands begin to still. The only noises he can hear now are his own. He reaches out to touch the blade of the knife, then closes his eyes. Real or imagined, that particular demon seems dispelled for now. It, or something else, will be back, of that he is sure. But for now, he focuses on his breathing, in and out, in and out, smooth and calm and methodical.

 

 

 

end


End file.
